Guild Wars 2

Hey Chaos, I think I just fought you in solo queue, though I was on my thief. Tried to whisper you but for some reason it wouldn’t go through.

AshinDreidon.3861:

I’m super excited to get any gold/pve reward from pvp. I don’t care if it’s not on the same payout scale because for me the bonus of not being mind numbingly boring is a huge plus for pvp gold earning.

Same. I just started PvP a couple of weeks ago and did so despite having not much gold or gear because it’s simply more fun. (Well, when there’s a close match anyway.)

Auesis.7301:

Any Thief PvE build that isn’t based around DPS is a joke and should be ignored.

LOL. Gotta love blanket declarations from people who think that whatever idea they come up with is the only possible good one.

Nobody would ever come up with new build ideas if they followed that sort of attitude.

theory.3580:

Press H, double click focus. Press 4. Double click original weapon to re-equip, press H to close window. Takes about 1 second total, that’s what I do.

Even if it were 1 second (doubtful) that’s what, 7% of my play time opening and closing windows to equip gear?

I’d rather go clean the garage.

ryston.7640:

… sorry but if their gameplay still has nothing in common with gw1, theyve still failed.

Why don’t you just play GW1?

I never played GW1 but I can’t understand this attitude I constantly see on these forums. If there are problems with GW2 let’s work with the devs to fix them but “like GW1” shouldn’t be the all-encompassing goal.

I just tried it with a carrion amulet with rampager jewel, and I swapped bountiful interruption for illusionary defense (since there’s only 1 source of interrupt in this build, right, and it’s on a long cooldown?) Not bad so far, though it’s hard to gauge when one is always getting teamed.

I had tried it with a straight berserker’s amulet but while the phantasms hit like a train that way, the bleeds are, well, anemic. In this setup with phantasmal fury the phantasms still have a 39% crit chance which is decent if unspectacular.

The torch definitely improves survivability a great deal over the pistol.

And still crickets from the dev team. This is curious.

Looks more like a “My Little Dragon” finisher.

I’m sure shatter is stronger. I’m just not really comfortable with that playstyle yet.

I tried it briefly and it was pretty effective.. though I have to admit that I really do miss the pistol. The phantasms also feel a bit gutless due to the low power. I might try it with a carrion trinket as well.

Looks interesting, at least for me, since I’m now often running a “troll build” (not that I care what people call it.)

Going to wait to see what actually “ships” on Tuesday though.

I’d still really appreciate some sort of comment on what you guys plan to do about not just people leaving in the middle of matches, but them frequently starting with a player missing.

Hey thanks! Interesting… you put the torch in and changed the traits, so it’s a bit closer to the conventional Blackwater. I’ll give it a try.

Appreciate the response.

Any response from the dev team, even acknowledging the issue and that some plan is in place to deal with it, would be appreciated.

This just isn’t a difficult problem to solve. Please solve it. I’m starting to dread going into solo queue.

Guess what the next match was? Right! Another 4v5.

I wish I were making this up.

RoRo.8270:

If the debuff actually effected anyone you would hear people creating threads here complaining about it

That’s actually a pretty astute observation. I didn’t even know it existed before this thread.

So my very next match and guess what it was? Right, another 4v5! Final score: 501 to 98. This time I was on the “winning” side, which just meant instead of feeling frustrated, I was bored.

How did this even get out of beta? I’m really baffled by it to be honest.

Silv.9207:

ANet can’t do more than that.

if (Seconds_until_match_starts <= 1) {
   if  ( (Number_of_players_on_team_A < 5) OR (Number_of_players_on_team_B < 5) ) {
      Abort_Match;
   }
}

There, solved.

This is not rocket science.

My simple but important question: why does the game allow frustrating, pointless 4v5 matches when a simple bit of code could be used to stop them from proceeding?

And it just happened again. That’s like 2 out of my last 5 matches.

I would really like some sort of response from a dev on this. It makes NO sense to me when a simple “IF” statement could stop it.

I would rather be kicked from the queue and have to start over than endure this frustrating nonsense.

This is the single worst thing I’ve ever encountered in this game and it’s near the top of the list of my MMO experiences overall.

Again, I seriously doubt those are the real numbers we’re going to see on Tuesday.

EverythingEnds.4261:

dont know if trolling or actual post…

Then don’t post. You’re adding nothing to the thread.

Thanks to those who responded seriously. I do have some experience with warrior so I’ll play with that a bit, though I suspect I’ll come back to mesmer and thief because they are more interesting in terms of playstyle.

xoom.4918:

This thread signifies the problem of Build Wars 2 – Making half-brained easy builds but not realising that there is more to the game than just 1v1 or 1v2. I hope I never see Qaelynn in solo or team Q.

Yeah, all I care about is things being half-brained and easy. That’s why, as a new player, the only two characters I’ve leveled to 80 have been mesmer and thief. Because they’re just so simple to learn as a newcomer.

I’m going to keep playing both in PvP because I like playing both. But I thought it might be fun to try some of these “OP” builds I keep hearing about as well.

I’m skeptical about that mesmer heal. We’ll see.

Archaon.6245:

Valentin.2073:

Hambow is not easy to play.

I stopped reading here…

Okay, since I’m a newbie who’s never played a “hambow”, please tell me in one paragraph how to build and play it so I win most of the time.

Thanks for the replies (and PM).

I have a warrior at mid levels so a bit of familiarity there. Haven’t played necro yet but after getting destroyed by them a lot they intrigue me.

True or false: I’m better off leveling up a new class in PvE to get a good feel for its abilities before diving into PvP sight unseen? That’s the approach I’ve taken so far, though obviously it takes time.

I’ve cut my teeth on mesmer and thief, not exactly easy classes for a newbie. I can handle taking a beating.

(I wonder how many of the people who will respond to this thread saying I shouldn’t play “cheese builds” are playing them themselves… )

Why, because it’s better to have people with more experience and stronger builds beating the snot out of people with both less experience and worse ones?

I’ve just been in a solo queue match that STARTED with 4v5. We never had a chance from the very beginning.

Why is this even possible?

The code should simply not allow a match to proceed until there are 5 people on both sides, and all of them actually there and not AFK.

Fixing this sort of thing should be the #1 priority of the dev team. I mean, seriously, what fun is it to be in a match that’s doomed from the get-go?

Okay, so in another thread people are talking about cheesy builds that dominate sPVP. What are the best ones? I’ve been in PvP for a couple of weeks and I figure hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If nothing else I need to learn how these work if I am going to have a chance of dealing with them even on my “non-cheesy” builds.

I only have experience with mesmer and thief so far, and my guess is those aren’t the builds where the cheese is usually found. I’m more interested in the builds that combine “bunkering” with high DPS.

Thanks and please don’t flame me.

Okay I have a challenge for you, BlackDevil. Can you adapt this build for sPVP?

I’ve tried to do this on my own but with only very limited success. I think the main problem is the much lower stat boosts and the difficulty in getting the various stats in the right proportions when you mostly have only one trinket to play with. I’ve even played with a celestial trinket, but it seems rather anemic in all respects; maybe I’m just not familiar enough with it.

Another issue is I often find I don’t have enough condition removal and defense to stand against a condi spammer or two.

What do you think? Or maybe this isn’t really intended for sPVP. I am spending much of my time there because it lets me try builds and increase my skill without spending a ton of my (meager) gold.

All I know is that, at least at my relatively low level, the games are not dominated by only a couple of classes. Maybe that’s true at the top, and if so, it should be addressed.

Last night it seemed like half the players on both teams in solo queue were mesmers.. and they were all running different types of builds.

Thanks. I am doing a lot of solo queue and occasional dueling as well. I do check the OMFG roster from time to time, though usually most people are elsewhere.

And I continue rotating through various builds still trying to find the magic combination that will work for me. It may take a while. In the meantime I do feel I’m getting better at this in general. I also am finding I prefer the more aggressive phantasm DPS style over the more passive PU style, which is a change that’s evolved over the last week or so…

Thanks for the reply.

Well that sounds good in theory and maybe for someone with your level of experience it works in practice. But when I try to play this build, all I need is one warrior in my face and those couple of defenses are gone in a couple of seconds and then I’m taking massive damage. And of course, if there’s more than 1 person, I’m toast.

I’m not trying to criticize your build, I’m sure it works well for you. But unless I’m missing something major, it takes a lot of skill to pull off…

Pyroatheist.9031:

All sigils with a cooldown share that cooldown. That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Okay, thanks. Why not use an on-crit then? Nearly anything seems more useful than +15% stun time in that build. (EDIT: NVM, they have cooldowns too, just not in the in-game descriptions.)

Pyroatheist.9031:

Now you can spam defense. Block, block, dodge, dodge, weapon swap, blurred frenzy, dodge, dodge, stun, swap, repeat.

Unless there’s some way to dramatically speed up weapon swaps, I honestly don’t get what you mean here. Those things just happen way too fast, and then all I have left is running in circles and hoping they attack the phantasms instead of me.

ETA: I think you just kicked my butt in a team match, lol. What were you running?

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Para sigils are mainly because nothing else really makes sense honestly. % bonuses don’t transfer to phantasms so…w/e. any other on swap sigils (like doom) or on crits will replace energy sigils, and that’s not a sacrifice that is smart to make.

Okay, I’m missing something here. Do certain sigils interfere with each other in dual weapon sets or something?

Okay, I tested this and got poison and no energy. That’s stupid.

Are there any other “unwritten rules” of sigils I should know? Thanks.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Para sigils are mainly because nothing else really makes sense honestly. % bonuses don’t transfer to phantasms so…w/e. any other on swap sigils (like doom) or on crits will replace energy sigils, and that’s not a sacrifice that is smart to make.

Okay, I’m missing something here. Do certain sigils interfere with each other in dual weapon sets or something?

Pyroatheist.9031:

The goal is defense, but defense is actually secondary to absolute maximized phantasm damage. The warlock is strong, but it tends to miss a lot in pvp, because the bolt doesn’t track. It’s also significantly weaker than the swordsman. Additionally, the mainhand sword has far better defense than scepter, and offhand sword actually has defense, unlike pistol. Ultimately, you’re not changing you’re defense that much, but getting a significantly weaker phantasm.

Gotcha.

My main problem with the build still boils down to the other guy being able to spam offense and me being unable to spam defense. What am I supposed to do after my 1 or 2 blocks are gone? Running away isn’t practical when I’m trying to cap a point.

That’s why I was thinking about the staff, because with decent condition damage the staff can be defensive but also can generate clones that do real damage. Was just a thought.

I’m just not all that impressed with main hand sword for defensive purposes. #2 is great IF you time it right and get someone willing to stand there and take a bunch of slashes to the face, but for me at least that is rare. And then what?

Yeah I expected that response.

You’re more experienced than I am so I’m not going to argue that I know better than you do. It’s just a bit of theorycrafting on my part.

Compared to a berserker’s amulet, a carrion amulet with berserker jewel changes the iSwordsman’s damage (based on tooltip) from 1775 to 1582, a change of about -10%. Duelist damage goes down by around the same amount. Crit chance, taking into account the trait, drops from 71% to 44%. Crit damage reduces from +50% to +35%.

Now the flipside.. sharper images damage increases by 94%, from 255 to 495. So they are going to crit less often but it’s going to hurt a lot more.

Damage from the #2 scepter block goes up by 76%, and confusion damage from #3 a similar amount. This seems like a much stronger payoff for trying to block stuff.

As a bonus, 3k more HP, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I thought of this because I’ve simply noticed that many of my opponents in PvP are not cleansing the conditions properly or rapidly, and it’s what is taking them down. The bleeds do much more damage and there’s a lot of them thanks to the phantasms. And the torment is deadly and a lot of people oddly don’t get rid of it.

Question: why do you run sigils of paralyzation in this build? I only see pistol #5 with a stun and that doesn’t seem like it warrants a sigil, especially since 15% of a small number is still pretty small. I was thinking of trying doom instead to help provide some of that other condition pressure.

Another question: if the goal is mainly defense, have you tried this with scepter+pistol and staff?

Thanks.

I think I inspired this to at least some extent so I am in. I have an ever-evolving mesmer currently using Pyro’s PvP build but also tinkering with Blackwater/Blackdevil variants. I also run a defensive PD/DD thief that I always need practice with.

Thanks for doing this.

I think one of my difficulties with it, actually, Pyro, is that exact defensive focus. Weapons always have an offensive attack on the #1 slot, so it can be used over and over. In contrast, the defense on the weapons in the build is via weapon skills with cooldowns. There’s only 3 or 4 of them I can use every 20 seconds, and that means the rest of the time I’m running around like a headless moa.

That said, I do seem to be getting a bit more comfortable with the build, though I still need a lot more practice.

Last night I was in a solo queue and ended up on a team with 3 thieves (including me). The other two began lamenting in team chat that we were doomed, we could never win with 3 thieves, etc.

We won something like 500 to 180.

Pick a class you like. Learn it, play it, have fun.

Yuki.1765:

hum, yeah that’s a bit condescending, but i’m sick of those players that can’t even cap a point.

Then play a single-player game. This is a multiplayer game and that means you have to deal with other players.

If someone clearly acts like they know what they are doing and takes charge, I’ll follow their lead. But if I ended up in a team with you and you acted the way you are here, I’d probably just block you on the spot.

As an aside, I really wonder how valid some of these “unwritten rules” about PvP actually are. Once I had a member of my team screaming at me that I should be “capping not fighting”.. meanwhile by myself I had 2 of the other team’s players tied up in knots as I darted around on my thief annoying them. Seems to me that leaves a 4v3 for the rest and they could do the capping that much easier.

I do agree with removing personal scores if they don’t really reflect what is needed to win, and if they discourage teamwork.

BTW I am starting to realize why people hate mesmers so much… seems most really don’t have any idea how to play against them. I was just in a hotjoin match where I watched an opponent literally — I mean literally — chasing two of my phantasms in circles around a column, while I stood a few paces away and watched.

I like to practice watching duels against other mesmers. I just play “follow the bouncing player”, trying to keep my eye on the real mesmer and off the clones. I find it does help over time.

You know, I think everyone is reading this as being like other venoms where it only applies to the next handful of attacks you make. But all of the existing venoms have a “Number of attacks” parameter on them. This one, as datamined, doesn’t. It says “5 stacks” but that’s not the same.

It’s unclear what this really will be. What if it heals you continuously per-attack for 30 seconds? That wouldn’t necessarily be bad, depending on when the cooldown starts from.

Might as well wait a few days rather than freaking out, IMO.

OMFG!

Look forward to it.

I’ll probably be online in the evenings as well (since I’m a freaking addict to this game right now.)

I’ve been using some variant of Blackdevil as my “base” for PvP for a long time, but I find people adapt to it as well. It has limited defense and good players who can identify the “real me” can burst me down pretty fast. The lack of condition removal is also often a problem for me.

They are both good and I continue to work on a way to get the “best of both worlds”. I do find it useful to change things up and surprise people once they think they have you figured out as being a standard build.

Chaos: I find that in hotjoin I spend at least a third of the time in the downed state or waiting for a respawn. The dueling servers can be useful at times, though there are griefers in them as well as a lot of people who want to stand around and chat..

Yuki.1765:

People can ask too …

They can if they know there’s something to ask about.

Yuki.1765:

Learn to read?

A good example of being condescending.

I see lots of complaints around here about how few people participate in PvP, and that attitude is part of the reason. Long-time PvPers need new PvPers more than the other way around. If the oldtimers make the environment a hostile one, they’ll just go back to PvE/WvW. They’ve lost nothing, while PvPers have lost the chance to grow the activity and have more potential good opponents down the road.

So it’s in your own best interest to stop pretending you burst from your mother’s womb with a gaming mouse in hand.

Thanks to those who explained the change.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Are there any particular classes/builds that you’re having trouble with?

I suppose “all of them” wouldn’t be terribly useful? I’ll try to pay more attention going forward. Off the top of my head, I think condition-spammers like necros and engis — though my guess is everyone has trouble with those. I also sometimes find I can’t generate enough damage to take down the heavy bunker types.

Xylith, that sounds like a more conventional phantasm build, which I’ve also tinkered with. As Pyro will likely say, this build is oriented around defense, not direct offense, so using those weapons makes it rather different. I’ve always been a big GS fan myself, but aside from the relatively long-cooldown #5, it really doesn’t have much in the way of defense compared to alternatives such as the staff.

I actually am one of the few people who likes the scepter. I enjoy teasing people into attacking with my arm up and watching the big torment tick. Off-hand sword is something I’ve never used before and is taking some adjustment.

I’m also tinkering with using a carrion amulet instead of a berserker one, to help take better advantage of the condition damage from weapons like the scepter, and the bleeds that the phantasms lay down. I think you are one of the folks that hates carrion, Pyro. But based on my calculations, using it reduces direct damage by about 40% (taking into account criticals) but nearly doubles condition damage. I have to test it more to see how it works… because it may be that the split between direct and condition damage means berserker is still better.

Actually I should make a carrion amulet with a berserker gem and try that.

Anyone still running this build? I’m trying it in sPVP now, almost exactly as Pyro laid it out, with mixed results. I’m far from experienced, so there may be nothing wrong with the build. I sometimes do pretty well with it, but often find that I am not able to keep enough illusions up to pressure my opponents and keep them off me. I sort of end up running around like a moa with my head cut off and feeling very much not in control of the combat… though maybe that’s the point.

Anyway, any tips to making this feel more “overpowered” would be useful.

Thanks for the replies.

Chaos, in general I ascribe to your theory. But I also understand taking things in stride. One of the difficulties with PvP for newcomers is lack of experience with other classes.. there are 8 and I’ve only so far played 3. I also don’t have the best reaction times. I need to know my limits and take things slowly.. and I don’t want to be a burden on teams either.

To put it another way.. I see a lot of folks saying the Blackwater build is “cheesy” or “too easy” but I still often struggle with it. Maybe I need to get to the point where I also find it too easy and then I’ll know I’m ready for something more challenging.

I did watch Vash’s video and it’s about as good as I’ve seen. But it’s still really hard to get a sense of how to get the timing and positioning right. A 20/20/0/0/30 build also has no toughness or vitality boost and when I’ve tried it in the past, I’ve died frustratingly quickly.

I’ve tried the phantasm build with some success. Mindcrush I never was able to get the hang of but I’ll keep trying.

Thanks again.

Thanks. I have looked there but it’s hard to tell what’s current and what would be appropriate for a newer player, so I was hoping for a bit of personal recommendation.

I read all the threads here and there’s lots of discussion of WvW and PvE builds.. not a lot about sPVP. I mainly do solo queue at least for now (I don’t know anyone to team with and am probably not good enough.) Any suggestions on good builds for sPVP?

I’m currently running a variation of my ‘black convertible’ build which switches between a Blackwater PU config and something more like Blackdevil’s hybrid setup. I have some success though not a great deal.. likely due at least in part to a lack of experience and execution skill.

Hoping for some new ideas in something I can handle at my skill level (which likely rules out shatter builds as I don’t seem to have what it takes to pull that off.) Thanks!

Note: Not looking for “roll a _ since mesmers are no good in sPVP” type responses.

As a newb, this thread would be more useful if someone explained what the issue/change is about.